FDA Faces 5% Staff Cutbacks In 1995

The US Food and Drug Administration's total budget for salaries and expenses in fiscal 1995 will be $905.9 million, the Senate has agreed, in its vote on the House/Senate conference report on next year's agriculture spending bill (HR 4554).

The earlier House vote on the report had agreed on a budget for the agency of $899.4 million, but this did not include an additional $6.5 million represented by mammography inspection fees.

Senator Dale Bumpers, chairman of the appropriations/agriculture subcommittee, says the agreed budget for next year will be $36.3 million higher than fiscal 1994's. The House had initially proposed a total for the agency of $914.4 million, while the original plan from the Senate had been $754.6 million, on top of which the upper house had included a proposal for raising $163.4 million in user fees for unspecified, FDA-regulated products. However, in August the House overturned this proposal, under a Ways and Means Committee resolution, on the grounds that it violated the constitutional requirement that all measures adopted as a way of creating revenue should originate in the House.